Futility VS Utility of Catching Up

DATELINE
SYDNEY APRIL 2009

Futility VS Utility of catching up

Yet another time, this friend down the road said, “I will come around knocking at your door to make a time to catch up.”

And yet again I wondered about the futility versus utility of catching up. This issue bothers me now when I am in my forties. However this query always bothered me as I started engaging with existential stuff.

In the youth there was some thrill, excitement about meeting up all sorts of people who I befriended at work, bumped into them walking down the street or having met them at an event.

I was single, available and purposeless – or you can say trying to figure out the purpose of it all. Everything else was secondary – career, partner, good food, good clothes, nice car, house, looks – all that mattered to me then was to change the world and to talk hours about injustices, to begin within my home country.

But then as it happens, I too got strayed from the dream path owing to ever rising pressure of making sure that I had some pennies on me, had a roof over my head and some semblance of a career. It went on and on and here I am today – same person with lot more experience of life, have a roof over my head, food in my pantry and some work to keep me busy. But I have lost the charm about meeting up with friends, catching up over a cup of coffee, going for a drink or a walk in the park.

I am back in my second home Sydney after a gap of four years and fondly remembered so many connections I had made here over nine years when I lived here.

With my friends in India, I talked of my mates in Australia as members of my global family. I felt that a kind of invisible force of support, empathy and kinship existed for me to go to sleep with. A kind of precious heirloom not handed down by an ancestor but my own legacy. I thought, it really didn’t matter how I have progressed materialistically or what brought me back - my mates here would still like to catch up as they should be as interested in me as I was in them.

I started looking up for some mates with lot of excitement and enthusiasm but more I tried to reconnect more I became aware of futility of it all. A rolling stone gathers no moss, I have been told by many people across the continents.

I was out of the physical space of mates in Australia and thus sort of made myself redundant in their mental space. Me, as a global villager took their presence with me but little did I realise their au revoir in fact meant goodbyes.

I was perhaps too unstable to have any worthwhile connection with. I thought it was, but it was not that kinship which stands by you whatever way your life shapes up as long you don’t ask for a loan or ask for a out of the way favour. May be they are tired of me- me always in greater need of advice, assistance, empathy, support as I have made myself homeless by virtue of being a migrant. Not one who is busy digging gold but more akin to an Indian sadhu (ascetic) ceaselessly in motion searching for TRUTH.

It’s their (my Aussie mates) collective conscience which manifested in the form of invitation (visa) through their government to their country - an invited guest, vetted guest, processed guest thrown at the deep end of it all. They woke up one morning and found me amidst them looking for everything which sustains life.

They did a great job but behold I inadvertently conveyed to them that I could do without them. In a way I ‘dumped’ my Aussie mates by packing up to wander again.

Now as I have wandered back again in, logically meeting me would be a waste of time for all these stable mates. For me it would involve repeating my story to all the mates, telling them what I did in all these four years when away. I felt there was not much point in making efforts to catch a train, to make them pick me up and devour their precious time.

All this catching up could be done in the form of an email status report too which my mates could have read in their own time, came back with some or no feedback and it would have satisfied their little curiosity which we all have about each other – I wonder what she has been up to? Easier to catch up on email; person is better in your inbox rather than in your face. On email you just share bits of information but when you meet in person you have bigger responsibility to engage with the person.

I often felt catching up was all about checking on each other, to ensure that the other person has not left me behind or vice versa; to see if there could be any synergy; to keep up with the social necessities; to make sure when one has a party there are some people around to invite over; to get affirmations that we all are stuffed up - and thus all is well.

I am still looking for answers to this question – why catch up? Why meet up?
I carried this question with me to India and found somebody I thought could answer this question.

A very inspiring woman who lived by herself and I befriended – very young in her nineties- she lived a life queen size till last year. She has left the physical realm. She told me, you meet people to share. She told me when you share for example your pain – it gets distributed, dispersed among the people you talk about. Your pain gets reduced in size. So it’s downsizing pain by sharing. Similarly when you share your joy, it becomes a bigger joy- so it’s upsizing by sharing.

I have faith in the explanation as given by one of my dearest mates and for now I shall continue making efforts to catch up with all very connected, disconnected, disenchanted, disengaged mates of mine. As I do like to hand over the status report of what I had been doing all those four years personally. It won’t deter me that I have greyed though I try to keep the grey bits coloured or hidden, that I have yet to properly tune into the colour of money, that they had four years of respite from me hassling them to catch up. I am still as insignificant as I used to be, just a speck of dust which can dust itself out of any space.

In the meanwhile I shall catch up personally – because I am a being, still have legs to carry me around and many tales to share.

©sumeghaagarwal